


a night as long as winter: i

by plantagenet



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Noir, F/M, London Underground, M/M, Multi, Not Canonical but Thematic, This escalated quickly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-09
Updated: 2012-12-09
Packaged: 2017-11-20 17:13:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/587786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plantagenet/pseuds/plantagenet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon Snow sits alone on the Night's Watch at Scotland Yard the day after Balon Greyjoy is found dead, floating belly-up in the River Thames. Who put him there and why remains a mystery the Metropolitan police have yet to solve, but that is all forgotten the moment that Alys Karstark walks in from the rain and demands his help, and his gun, in finding her missing fiancé. Daryn Hornwood was a reporter, a man loyal to the North but reckless and due to meet Greyjoy for an interview the morning after he disappeared. Tracing his steps leads the pair deep into the midnight city and into a pit of snakes - and other beasts - all with the same rumour on their lips. <i>Someone wants the Young Wolf dead.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. THE IRON PRICE / THE GIRL IN GREY

**Author's Note:**

> "Fear is for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north. **Fear is for the long night** , when the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little children are born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow gaunt and hungry, and the white walkers move through the woods."

 

**THE IRON PRICE**

  


He fell. He was _pushed_.  
  
The old conundrum had consumed the hive mind of the Metropolitan police for twelve solid hours and by the time the night was beginning to gather, they were still nowhere close to an answer.  
  
"Do you think that's why they build those places so close to the docks?" he'd asked as the sirens had been filling Scotland Yard Road and the lights had beaten their path east through the setting sun. "So if anyone jumps, there's less mess?"  
  
"He didn't jump." Sergeant Mormont had been pulling on his vest, slipping the straps around the arms of his oxford shirt. His work was symbolic, for the most part: desk-work and press-work. But the newspapers and the televisions' eyes had all turned eastwards towards the wharfs and the harbours. The old man's body had washed up with the tide on the Tilbury side of the long tongue of the Isle of Dogs. "You've never seen what the Thames does to a dead man." He looked up, eyes the same turgid gray as the water that swallowed the corpse. "The crabs ate his eyes. It's a mess."  
  
"How do you know he didn't jump?"  
  
The Old Bear grunted and clipped his radio to his chest.  
  
"I just _know_. And you know nothing, kid. Men like Balon Greyjoy - they don't jump."  
  
The rain was beginning to dash against the ground outside. A fresh batch of cars waited, lights steaming, red-blue, red-blue, in the mist. The cold air stung his face as the sergeant swept out. The metal doors squeaked shut again and silence crept in like winter, settled like the frost. Jon Snow felt it in his bones.  


* * *

  


 

**THE GIRL IN GREY**

 

  
She came in from the rain and his heart might have stopped.  
  
"Night's watch?"  
  
Jon was alone in the offices. The bloated corpse of Balon Greyjoy had dragged all his fellow officers with it downstream to Canary Wharf. It was a quarter to midnight and he was on his third cup of coffee. Her smile had a wicked edge to it.  
  
"I'm sorry?"  
  
The girl wasn't even smiling. He didn't know what he was talking about. She had a hollow, hungry look to her, and as she bent to shake out her umbrella Jon saw that beneath the buttons of her black coat, there were silver sequins flashing.  
  
"I said are you the night's watch?" There was something about her that was familiar, but she was too beautiful for him to think he'd forget her. Perhaps creatures with such icy eyes and such ink-black hair would always strike a similar chord in him. Her earrings were like smashed glass. He could cut his throat on them.  
  
"I'm the watch."  
  
She stood up straight, fixed him in her gaze.  
  
"I'm Alys Karstark." Jon knew that name. "My fiancé is missing. I need your help."  
  
He hadn't gotten as far to look at anything but her face and her legs, but she drew up close to the desk and put her hands out on the counter and it was then he saw the diamond round her finger. An old money sort. Yes, Karstark was a name he knew.  
  
“I know of your father,” he said, blankly. The girl stared at him, so he cleared his throat and changed tack. "How long has he been gone?" He reached for a form. Alys's eyes moved with his wrist.  
  
"About four days," she said. "Passed me on the threshold, gave me a kiss and said he was going out."  
  
"You know where?"  
  
"His uncle's business, I think. He's a journalist. Said there was something he had to find there."

Jon put a form out on the desk for her.  
  
"Fill this in and-"  
  
"No." She slapped down the hand with the ring. "No, there's no time for that." Jon looked up at her, unblinking. Alys pressed her lips together. "He's gone. He wouldn't just leave like that. Not me. Daryn's so loyal it makes me sick sometimes. But he's an idiot and he likes his secrets. All I know is that he was going to his uncle's place that night to get something, and that he was supposed to be back in time to get some sleep. He had a interview with Balon Greyjoy in the morning and when he didn't come home I thought maybe he'd slept somewhere else and gone straight there the next day. Only now Balon Greyjoy's dead and Daryn's missing and I'm out of excuses to give him." She looked stiff as a corpse. Her eyes didn't shy away from his. Jon felt exposed as if she'd pulled a knife from her sleeve and put the tip to his chin. "What's your name?" she asked.  
  
"Snow," he told her, Snow - she didn't have to know the rest. Alys Karstark processed the information and then her spine went loose. She dropped her hands and there were tears in her eyes. Jon flicked his tongue against the back of his teeth and tried to fight his gut instinct, which was to offer her tea. "Did your fiancé have any enemies?"  
  
She went pale, paler than she had before, and everything about her glittered like ice. The diamonds in her ears, her eyes, the silvery-grey spangles beneath her coat. There were raindrops caught in her black hair.  
  
"Night's watch," she whispered. "When do you get off, Snow? Say midnight. Please say midnight."  
  
Her lips were red as cherries. He might have told her anything.  
  
"Midnight," Jon murmured, and it was true.  
  
Her diamond flashed again as her fingers wound into her hair.  
  
"I know where to look, but I can't go there alone. I need protection and I don't know where to find it other than what the state can give me." The half-moons of her lashes fluttered. "If you come with me, I can pay you."  
  
"Miss Karstark-"    
  
"No. Listen. You don't understand. Please."  
  
Alys shut her eyes briefly.  
  
" _Please_." Her voice trembled. "Help me."  
  
It was ten to midnight on the wettest summer night he'd yet known. Bed was an hour's journey underground and it would be cold and lonely when he got there. A rich man was dead and his empire was dissolving into the rain. No one would let him help when he wanted.  
  
And the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen was asking him for it.  
  
"I'll help you," he said. _I'm a policeman, I help people_ , he thought. Alys opened her eyes, but still, she didn't smile. She looked as if she might cry again. She passed her hand back through her hair again and wiped beneath one eye. He gave her all her answer willingly in the end, and she pushed her fingertips into the edge of the counter and drew a breath in over her teeth.  
  
"Do you have a gun?"  
  
Slowly, he nodded. Alys Karstark smiled and it was as fox-sly as he'd imagined.  
  
"My hero," she sighed. "You'll do just the trick."


	2. A CITY IN PALMISTRY / THE MERMAID CLUB

 

 

* * *

**A CITY IN PALMISTRY**

Between London Bridge and the great glass exoskeleton of the City Authority there ran a pedestrian causeway. That night it was nearly empty. Rain made greasy smudges of the street lamps. Alys took him by the hand and dragged him beneath the wood-construct walkway. Graffiti lined the walls, paint bleeding over laser prints. St Paul’s in black and white. The Jubilee Market. The Houses of Parliament. 

( _Somehow, she’d lured him into letting her around the desk to the computer program. Even now he could not have said for sure what it was that made him do it, but as she fixed a cigarette between her lips and sucked the flame into the filter, he had some sort of idea._

_She had the Crimint Plus reference written inside her palm; when she unfolded her fingers the ink was smudged._

Manderly _. That was the name she’d typed into the database. Run a diagnostic on the maps and squared them here._ Daryn’s uncle has a place, but I don’t know where it is, _she’d said, and that was all she’d said._

_“You going to tell me what’s going on then?” It was summer, but his breath came out white and opaque in the rain. She outdid him though, hissing cigarette steam across her teeth and into the air._

_“I told you he keeps secrets from me. Daryn, I mean.” Her eyes turned away towards the dark entrance. “He says that’s because its the way cities are. They hide things. You have to hide yourself to get the best view of the cracks in the facade.”_

_“So he keeps secrets from you?”_

_Alys unfurled her hand again._

_“He keeps secrets. His family keeps them. Mine too.” She gave him a smile. “Who knows, Snow. Maybe I’m keeping a few from you.”_

_“You think that’s wise? Considering?” Jon watched the ash fall from her taper. Alys’ red lips twisted with a grin._

_“Oh, it’s always wise for a woman to have secrets. I didn’t need a fiancé to tell me that._ ”)

She pressed her cigarette into the concrete with the point of one heel and walked away down the covered walkway to where the surveyor’s blue paintwork started and there was a laborer’s doorway into the site. 

“Come along, Snow. Here’s the part where I need you.”

He followed her into the dark and felt her hand slide around his elbow. The other slipped beneath his coat and across the opposite side of his chest. His skin prickled under her touch, but he knew she was just feeling for the gun.

“Where are we going?”

“ _To linger in the chambers of the sea._ ” Her hand fell away, her fingers tightening in his sleeve.

“And why do you need me?”

Alys hummed, leading him along the interior wall. There was a light ahead of them through the gloom.

“Oh you know,” she sighed, and he swore he heard her laugh. “Fresh blood in the water. Always brings out the sharks.”

 

* * *

 

 

 

**THE MERMAID CLUB**

There were crab shells breaking underfoot as they went down the stairs, led on by a pale green light. This was a river bed, he knew, but the air smelled of salt. The walls inside were wrought over with glass mermaids, painted with seaweedy iridescence. There was music playing, a slow and jagged waltz - he thought - with an accordion and a singer whose voice was high and foamy. Jon felt his suspicions sink into his stomach. _His uncle's business, he said. There was something he had to find there._

What sort of thing would a man collect from all the way at the bottom of the Thames? The air was clammy and cold and sunk deep in his lungs. Someone was helping Alys out of her coat, revealing her silver fish-scales beneath. The dress clung to her hips, liquid grey like a current. Across the other side of the bar, with its sea-glass chandelier and its spinning green lights, Jon felt a cold gaze land on them.  

“Alys, what are you doing? You’re not supposed to be here.” A girl, not much younger than Jon felt at that moment, was standing at his side, her face tipped to Alys and her long blonde hair twisted into curls. In her hand she help a splash glass, filled to the brim with liquor and olives.

“I’m looking for Daryn, Wynnie,” Alys did not move. “He’s missing.”

“I saw him two days ago,” the girl said, plain-faced. “He was here. He’s around.”

“Two days ago?” Jon heard his own voice, muffled through the rivery-damp air. The girl flicked her eyes to him; they were green like the olives in her glass. 

“Who’s this?” she asked. 

“Wex,” Alys said, quickly. “ _Pyke_.”

The girl flushed cold. Her rosebud mouth opened slightly and she looked from one of them to the other. She leaned past Alys to put her drink up on the bar.

“You brought one of _them_ here?” Jon heard the girl hiss. “You move quickly, Alys.”

“With the tide, Wynnie.”

Jon looked past her. A ring of tables pushed out below the chandelier seated several gray-templed men. Their tablecloth was pocked with glass marks and their steely eyes flicked over them and their lips did not move.

The blonde stood up, a smirk painted on her lips. Despite it, she seemed stiff, too well-behaved to know quite how to react. She took a step back towards the sunken bandstand. 

“Have the tender make you a brine martini. I’ll see if Daddy has time for you.” 

The glass was salty under-lip. It stung the corners of his mouth. 

“These your in-laws?” He asked, once the girl had ebbed away. Alys Karstark said nothing for a while, her eyes upturned to the ceiling, traced all the way round in black. Mossy tendrils dragged across the glass, mollusks scuttled. 

“Manderlys,” she whispered. “I’ve never been here before. Daryn comes all the time but he never told me where the entrance was.” She sipped her drink and her lips left no stain. “Secrets, you see. London’s full of them.”

“That’s why you needed me.” He said, chest hollow as a drum. He found himself counting the breaths, wondering how long he could last if the ceiling cracked and the water poured in. _The police reports. The property purchase database. That’s what you needed._

Alys’ eyes flashed like her diamonds.

“Fifty words for snow,” she showed her teeth. “I have many needs, Constable.” Salt clawed in the back of his throat. 

“Miss Karstark,” a dark voice was with them suddenly. “This way.”

He tailed her to the back of the room, through a swinging door and into a dome-shaped den with rugs the color of sea foam and a half-circle table. Stone starfish clung to the walls. Jon thought he saw one or two move. 

Wyman Manderly he recognized from the papers, rotund enough to think the room had been made to suit him exactly. Beside him, Wynnie sat, her chair turned slightly towards an iron-haired young man with glassy eyes. A group of men in suits flanked the rounded wall and they all fell silent when Alys stepped up to the table. Jon felt the weight of the gun beneath his arm, but it was only a little comfort. 

“He’s not one of ours,” the man with Wynnie said. Wyman Manderly shook in his chair. 

“What’s a Pyke to any of you? He could be anybody,” he looked up across the table. “What are you doing here, Alys Karstark? Don’t you know the ironborn sink if you take them below the surface?”

He could not see her face, but Jon knew Alys was taking in the sight of each of their companions, turning their composures over in her mind. He tried to do the same, trying to will himself to remember any of them from a mugshot. There was a young girl standing between two them, too bright-faced to by anyone other than Wynnie’s sister, her hair a red-gold held back by a green ribbon. One man, his smile oily as a shark’s, had her by the wrist.

“That hasn’t seemed to have stopped you, Wyman,” she said, slowly. The first stranger spoke again. 

“We’re no Greyjoys, girl,” he spat. 

“Our guests are at home with the lagan and the derelict,” Wyman said, smoothly. He rubbed one chin of many. “The Freys are our brothers. Our friends. Daryn must have told you that.”

Jon stiffened. That jargon he knew. For every dirty crime that tracked in through Scotland Yard covered in Greyjoy fingerprints there was never a Frey far behind. Maybe that’s what Mormont had meant - men like Balon Greyjoy don’t jump. They’re too proud to jump. For fifteen years the Metropolitan Police had been trying to finger him for smuggling across the Channel, but his jagged kingdom in Canary Wharf was a polished one - too polished. The moniker of piracy would never stick. There was always someone else there to take the fall. 

Maybe they’d run out of sacrifices. Maybe the Freys had turned tail downstream and left. And it was Balon who’d met with gravity this time. 

“Daryn’s missing,” Alys said, sharply. “Last I knew, he was here.”

Wyman raised an eyebrow. 

“Wynafryd, have you seen your cousin?” The girl at the stable tensed and gave her father a look. 

“Yes,” she said, as obediently as if she’d read it from a card. The Frey who had spoken took her hand and held it on top of the table. “I saw him two days ago.”

Jon saw the girl with the green ribbon flinch as her partner pinched her wrist. 

“There you have it,” Wyman dismissed. “He’s not missing. You’ve simply mislaid him.”

Alys curled her fingers into fists. 

“He’s _gone,_ ” she corrected. “He was here to collect something and then he went to speak with Balon Greyjoy.”

“Wynafryd?” The mermaid king addressed his daughter again. The Frey’s fingers crooked in her palm. She looked as though she might shiver. 

“He came to get some money,” she shrugged. “After the interview he said he was going away-”

“Where would he _go_?!” he’d not heard Alys raise her voice before. The river air drank it up, made it beat against the glass dome, stretched the sound of her and shrank it again. A few of the Freys smiled into their drinks.

“Shouldn’t you be asking your new friend, Miss Karstark?” Wyman mimicked his daughter’s shrug. “None of us here has such an insight into the ironborn motives as this Mr. Pyke.”

Jon felt he should speak, but the room was too full, too laced with blades and edges. Alys looked back at him, helpless. 

“It matters not to me where your fiancé sleeps, Alys,” Wyman went on. “Only that you can’t seem to keep track.” There was a smug smile between his cheeks. “Wynafryd is newly promised to young Rhaegar, here. You can be sure she’ll keep him more steadfast than a Karstark can - I approve of her choice and that makes all the difference. Do give them your congratulations.”

Wynafryd smiled but it sunk fast when her betrothed forced her hand up to the light, showing the winking diamond ring. Alys was shaking.

“Let’s not bring family politics into this,” she snapped. Wyman narrowed his little eyes.

“You were told long ago that this place would not welcome you until your father gave his blessing to our nephew. Karstarks have coal-black hearts - there’s no place for any of you here until you add a gold band to that diamond on your finger. As far as I know, the great Rickard has yet to consent to your marriage and therefore, Alys Kar _stark,_ you do not have mine to be here.” He huffed a sigh. 

“Karstarks are too proud. _Manderlys_ take care of their own.” 

Alys turned, light ribboning from the hem of her skirt. 

“ _Proud?”_ she sounded incredulous. “You would be nothing - _nothing! -_ without our charity.”

“How well you make it known,” Rhaegar Frey leered. Jon reached for Alys’ hand.

“Karstarks are _loyal._ You promised! You promised the Starks-”

“The Starks?” Wyman’s voice cut her off and Jon felt the word slice into him. _The Starks._ What about the Starks? His hand stopped, mid-air, hovering between them. “What do the Starks matter in this city now?” The man shook his great head. “I’m quite tired of her howling. Show her out, and the kid with her.” 

Jon closed his hand around her wrist, pulling her towards the door. There were tears in her eyes but she kept them at bay. 

Outside, the rain had stopped and the air seemed colder, thinner, and happily so. Alys leaned back against the wooden wall and Jon was not sure if she wanted him to speak. She’d been so straight backed, so even-toned and calm for most of the hour, but now she burned with anger, bloomed full of passion. If she’d wanted him to speak, he wouldn’t have been able anyway. In time she pulled her coat on over her bare shoulders and looked up at him. 

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve wasted your time.”

“No,” Jon shook his head. _What do the Starks matter in this city?_ His ears were still on fire with it. “No, we’ll keep going. You said he had enemies?”

Alys looked at him, incredulous. She opened her mouth but stopped before she could say anything more. Her eyes were caught on something behind his shoulder and when he turned he saw the girl with the green headband standing in the entrance to the tunnel. 

“Wylla?” Alys’ voice dropped to a whisper. The girl stepped forwards through the shafts of light. Her dress hung in silvery-green droplets to her knees and her eyes were wide. There were fingerprints around her wrist where that man had held her too tightly. She had something in her hands, folded up in dark velvet. 

“You mustn’t be angry with Daddy.” Her footfalls fell heavy across the rain wet ground. Alys fell to her, raising her hands to the girl’s cheeks. _What are you saying,_ she was asking. _What are you saying?_ Jon hung back beside the door.   
  
“I don’t believe he’s an ironborn,” Wylla said, looking at him over Alys’ shoulder. She turned to looked back at him, black hair falling against the bronze and the green ribbon, but said nothing. Jon watched as she carded her white fingers through the girl’s red hair. “His face is too sweet to have salt in his blood,” the girl murmured.  
  
“We left you down there,” Jon said to her. “How did you get back here? I only saw the one door.”  
  
“There are many secret ways beneath the river,” Wylla said. “Even I don’t know them all.”  
  
“What do you know, Wylla? Why mustn’t I be angry?” Alys jerked her face up under the fluorescent lights. The girl struggled back.  
  
“Wynnie’s lying. Daddy told her to lie, just like he told me to come here and tell you the truth. I know about the promise. We all remember the promise.” She was shaking her head, digging her fingers into the velvet. Her voice trembled. “Daryn was here four days ago. He knew something. He told Daddy about it. The day after that, the Freys came. I think he’s dead, Alys. I think they killed him.”  
  
“Shh,” Alys reached for her again. “Shh, Wylla - tell me. What did Daryn know? What did he come here to find?”  
  
The girl’s face opened up to tears and for a moment she fought to speak. When she did, it was to Jon, not Alys. She had a stare like piano wire.  
  
“Someone wants the Young Wolf dead.”  
  
Her voice buffeted in his ears. A prickle ran down Jon’s spine. _The Young Wolf._ There were no wolves left in the north anymore...  
  
“What?” Alys voice sounded very far away. “Wylla… I don’t understand. Robb Stark is-”  
  
“- _dead_ ,” Wylla finished. “I know.” Her fingers rolled into fists. “But he’s back. Daryn said so. Daddy said he’d heard something, like maybe he’d seen him too.”  
  
Jon’s throat was dry as a bone.   
  
“I don’t understand,” Alys was trying to say, but Wylla barreled on.   
  
“ _The wolves will come again_ ,” she said, sharply. “He never died, he just went into hiding - that’s what Daryn said, and someone knows now and wants him gone. Daryn went to accuse the Greyjoys and now he’s gone too. He was stupid, Alys - he was so stupid.” The girl’s fingers loosened in the velvet and she looked down. “But we’re not stupid. We can keep our old enemies close, Dad says. We can send a message from under the waves that they won’t forget.” She pushed it forwards into Alys’ hands. “He wanted me to give you this. Same thing Daryn came for. Says you need one too now.”   
  
The weight fell heavily into her hands.   
  
“Wylla-” Alys began to say, but the velvet fell back and her tongue stopped still. There was a pistol in her grasp, old fashioned and small - mother of pearl grip. Jon took a step forwards and then there were footsteps that made his blood freeze.   
  
“What are you still doing here?!” Wynafryd appeared at the mouth of the tunnel. She pulled her sister away from Alys. “Daddy said we have to go. _They_ have to go. _Now_.”  
  
“Wait!” Jon heard his voice build against the tunnel walls. “Robb Stark is _dead._ ” They seemed to have disregarded the fact. “I know he’s dead, I-”  
  
Wynafryd pulled Wylla to her side, her mouth sealed into a hard line. Her curls looks untidy and teased apart.   
  
“You what?” Her eyebrows rose with her voice. “Saw the body? Everyone in the country saw the body.” She certainly wasn’t lying now. The pictures had been front page news. Three bullets; two in the chest and one in the knee-cap to stop him running. Masked gunman, the papers said. No suspects, they said.   
  
His head was spinning.  
  
“Doesn’t matter,” Wynafryd went on, her tone clipped. “He’s back and someone wants to finish the job for real now. And not just him. They’ll want you dead too now like Daryn,” she said, haughtily, “I did say you shouldn’t have come. You’ve fallen into a pit of snakes, Alys. And other beasts.”  
  
“But who?” Alys gripped the gun. “Who are those people downstairs? The Freys?”  
  
“I don’t know. Maybe Daryn didn’t even know. But those men down there came to make sure no one made a sound soon as they snuffed him out.”  
  
“Snuffed-”  
  
“No more, we have to go,” Wynafryd gave her sister a sharp tug.   
  
“Wait!” Wylla chirped. “Wait! Tell her the rest!” Wynafryd fell silent and for a moment, the sound of the river was all there was to sting their ears.   
  
“What’s the rest?” Alys’ voice was hard and sharp as a nail. “What?”  
  
The sisters looked at each other, twin image princesses with frightened eyes. Jon wondered if they had pistols too and why their father had sent them away, up to the surface. Wynafryd shook her head but Wylla twisted in her grip.   
  
“When he came before - Daryn - when he came to get the gun for Balon Greyjoy. He didn’t come alone.” She didn’t wait for Alys to ask again. Her bottom lip puckered, stubbornly. “He came with a woman and then he got the gun from Daddy and they left. Together.”  
  
Alys said nothing for a long time. Wynafryd fidgeted with her diamond ring.   
  
“Who?” Jon finally spoke for all of them. Wylla shrugged.   
  
“I dunno. I’d never seen her before. But she was beautiful.”  
  
He could have screamed at her for the thorn that stuck in. Alys didn’t move - didn’t wilt. No look crossed her face. She just stared, with her fingers in the velvet around the gun. Jon put a hand on her back and she did not flinch.  
  
“Wylla, let’s go.” Wynafryd said again, pulling her sister back towards the tunnel. “You want my advice. Leave town tonight.”  
  
“I can’t,” Alys smiled grimly. “The Young Wolf’s in danger. Karstarks keep their promises.”  
  
Wynafryd didn’t return the gesture. Wylla did, though.   
  
“So do we,” she said, and her smile was sly and slow. “This farce is almost through.” Her sister gave her a shake.  
  
“Find yourself someone who can kill then, Karstark, and make sure they’re half as dumb as you are to stay in the city tonight. Now _go. Quickly._ ”  
  
They disappeared into the dark, heels clipping over the cobbles. Alys was already heading off after them and Jon followed close behind. They hadn’t left the halo of light leaving the tunnels entrance when suddenly there was the bang of rapid machine-gun fire shaking the ground beneath them, suddenly drowned and muffled, and the river flashed with white-hot bullets buried far beneath the currents.   
  
Alys stopped short, her hand on his chest as her fingers curled in his collar. Jon wondered if he could feel her heart pounding.   
  
“They’re all dead,” she whispered in the rain. Every one of them, corpses trapped beneath the waves. Just like Wylla said. The entrance to the massacre was hidden. The police might never know. _But I know,_ Jon Snow thought. _I know now, maybe, who pushed Balon Greyjoy. What he wanted. Who he hunted._ There were rumours aplenty but no facts. But he knew things. He knew things that Alys didn’t know. Like where Robb would be and who he would see and that they were brothers. He knew.   
  
Alys’ fingers were hot against his skin. When he looked up at her, she was holding the pistol experimentally in the other hand.   
  
“When I was little, I wanted to marry Robb Stark,” she said, spacing out her words like she was waiting for him to stop her at every one. “I never even met him, but I cried when he died.”   
  
Not many people cried. Their tears had already been spent on his father and there were none left.   
  
Jon shivered in the rain. It didn’t matter. Men didn’t come back from the dead. But rumours were enough to pull triggers and they’d just left a massacre behind them. God knows what was ahead of them now.  
  
“You ever killed anyone, Snow?” Alys asked him. Jon shook his head and she looked up, eyes bright as fire through the storm. “You know anyone we can trust who has?” Jon wasn’t sure he should smile, but, for a moment, he wanted to.   
  
“No. Do you?”  
  
It was a joke, but Alys Karstark didn’t laugh. Her earrings glittered in the rain.  
  
“I might,” she said. “But we’ll have to hurry.”


	3. THE LAST HEARTH IN MAYFAIR

 

* * *

**THE LAST HEARTH IN MAYFAIR**

After midnight the streets around Chelsea and Mayfair were dead to the untrained eye. The sleek black taxi Alys demanded ejected them onto a corner and sailed off into the moonlight. The Manderlys’ pistol had been slipped into her purse and she was breathing hard like she’d been running. Jon looked about. The houses were icy white, columns falling like bars between flowered topiaries. The rain had stopped, but the street shone white and jagged. 

“You know a killer in the Royal Borough?” he asked. The darkness drank his voice and the crescent moon snarled in the sky. Alys turned, her coat unbuttoned and her dress sparkling. 

“I can trust you, can’t I? You’ve got a trustworthy face,” she said, quietly enough for the dark. “But there are plenty of dirty police in this town. You could run home now, Snow. I wouldn’t hold it against you.”

“No,” he spoke faster than he thought, and after that he had to take a moment to let the cogs in his mind recalibrate. “I said I’d help.” _And I’m worried about Robb._ “And I’m worried about you.” 

She drew up close to him, so close he could smell the heat and flowers on her skin when she pressed a kiss to his cheek. He felt the cool pad of her finger circle the hollow in his throat. So much nicer than a knife point. 

“You’re sweet, Snow.” He could hear what went unsaid as she stepped away and onto the road. _You’re too sweet._

He wanted to know what she thought about it. If she knew Robb Stark, if she knew any of them. He wanted to know if she hadn’t been able to get the sound of machine gunfire out of her head too. Was she angry about the woman her fiancé had left her to see? Was she sad that he was probably dead? As if she’d read his mind she turned back quickly, easing the diamond ring off her finger and putting it into her purse with the gun. 

“When we go inside,” she whispered, rubbing at the mark it’d left, red like a spider bite, “let me do the talking.”

“I don’t talk much,” he said. She looked back with the sparkle of a smile, all the black curls in her hair hanging down one shoulder.

“I had noticed.”

“About this murderer-” he stopped her before she could turn again. 

“Oh, I never said he was a murderer,” Alys said, haughtily. 

“But-”

She was leaning forwards again. His throat was full of her perfume, her cigarette smoke.

“His father bought off the judge,” there was a laugh in her voice when she whispered into his ear. The sound was like a knife’s edge. “They never even took him to trial.”

She drew him away and between columns to a brass door. Alys put her finger to her lips and Jon felt his lungs turn to cotton. It opened and she pulled him inside. 

A certain surname could get a person anywhere. _Karstark_ was one of them. So was _Frey_ or _Tully_ ; interchangeable bank-note monikers swapped for cash and credit across the city _. Stark_ wasn’t like that. Stark had too much weight. For every door it opened it shut another behind it. 

 _Snow_ was a better name for a man like him. But that wasn’t important. Her’s was enough to let them pass beyond the velvet rope and she led him up the stairs to a room full of music and lights. A circular bar lit from below was well stocked with full bottles on glass shelves. The ceiling mimicked it, a doughnut ring of purple bulbs shining bright against the gold-orange glow of the floor lights. A blackjack table affronted the space, the dealer‘s back to them, and all about in a spiral there were roulette wheels, hold’em lawns in mossy green and baccarat counters. At the back, where it could not be disturbed, was a wide poker table. Men in suits hunched over cards and flipped their chips over idle fingers. 

There was a stage, raised half into the wall, and the set up for a band. Only a pianist was playing.

“Get me a drink,” Alys said slowly. “A dirty martini.” She looked up at him from the stairs. “I’ll be back in a moment.” Her eyes had sought out something across the room. He peeled the damp wool back from her shoulders, turning her out to the floor as she left without another word. Jon wanted to obey, to go and order drinks and show his loyalties, but she’d said _killer,_ and her story had said _rich killer_ and worry gnawed at him.

He picked a spot to be observant. Through the glass shelves he could see the shimmer of her dress and the black of her hair as she made her way around the end of the poker table. He saw her stop, bend, graze her lips across one player’s jaw and move away again. 

“Dirty martini,” Jon told the man at the bar. “And an old-fashioned.” 

Alys had moved again, standing on the near side now. When the glasses came he quietly weighed whether or not to go to her and decided she might forgive him his ignorance since she seemed so endeared to her face. She looked up when came close to her, but if she were alarmed, he didn’t see it. 

“He’s here?” Jon murmured to her. Alys hummed. 

“And not doing well.” She took the glass stem from his fingers and raised her drink to the man at the far end of the table. Handsome. Young. Broad-shouldered. He smiled at the gesture, one eyebrow inching up. The dealer distributed the cards and he peeled them into his hand. Jon knew that face. How did he know that face?

Alys sipped her drink and her eyes fell to the new hand of cards nearest. She tucked her hair behind one ear and put out her two fingers as she did so. _You’ve something,_ she started, passing a hand across his lapel again. Four fingers out. “It’s a pity you didn’t have a suit,” she sighed. “But the hair is good.” She swept it back slightly, moving his unrulies with thumb pressed to index in a circle. Ace. Jon clicked. Two fours. One ace. He smiled. 

“You’ve done this before.”

She smiled, the white band of her teeth eating away at her cherry-red mouth. 

“A girl gets bored. But boys get greedy. Watch.”

The handsome man across the table pushed his chips into the centre green. Three eights of a kind trumped the two with the high, and the man with the silver shock of hair threw his cards out in anger. There was a titter of applause and the winner made show of collecting his silver winnings again. 

“Should I know him?” Jon asked. The ice in his drink thawed, unattended. Alys smiled and looked away. 

“They call him the Smalljon. Never learned the power a little bet can do.” She lifted her hand and waved down the table. “Always playing risks with daddy’s big bucks instead.”

 _Umber._ He knew that too. The memories were coming back. Umbers and Karstarks went way back, twisted about each other in coal and iron trade. Jon would have said something in return but his hand was suddenly empty, fingers cold against thin air. The ice clinked again as Smalljon Umber took a swig, his chest level with Jon’s shoulder. 

“Perfect, Karstark,” he said, athletic victory grin carving into his face. “You’re perfect. Walk by the roulette table next and I’ll pick up your bill - same as Monaco. Who’s this one?” 

He pointed a finger around the glass to Jon, who said nothing, only watched how Alys smiled, simpering. 

“ _Greedy._ I thought you were off the craps table, Umber?” she began, mildly. “Didn’t you find a new heiress to seduce?”

“Funny story, that. And yet this is the first place you thought to look for me, I’ll bet.”

“So goes the problem, dear.” She shook back her hair and the Smalljon took her in with a grin. 

“Who’s the stiff, Alley-cat?” He cocked his head in Jon’s direction again, gulping down the golden bitters. Jon wished he had something to close his fingers around, but Alys gave him a feline smile and his hands relaxed in his pockets. 

“He’s Snow,” she said, curling her grin around her martini. “He’s a new friend of mine.”

“Jon,” Jon added, not wanting to give much more away. 

“Friend, hm?” Umber looked between the two of them. “Well your new friend brought another friend along under his arm, princess, and if I can tell I’m sure there’s a dozen other geezers can too here and they’re not as friendly as me.”

“How can you tell?” Jon knew better than to flinch, put his hand to the gun in his holster for security’s sake or look around him, though Alys’ eyes tracked there. 

The Smalljon smirked. 

“Well,” he said, “that’s a very cheap suit.”

“Lay off,” Alys hissed, swatting him on the arm. “He’s a cop, okay?” The effect was instantaneous and Jon Umber was hardly subtle.

“You brought a _cop_ here, are you out of your mind?!” It might have only been her long fingers bent around his wrist which kept his voice below a whisper. 

“Why?” Jon heard himself ask, half a smile threatening to break out on his face. “This place is all on the books, isn’t it?”

“He’s _off duty_ ,” Alys rolled her eyes. The Smalljon turned and looked him square in the face, hazel eyes slightly squint. 

“Have you ever heard of me?” he hissed. Jon thought about glancing at Alys for a rescue, but decided that would give entirely the wrong response so he exhaled sharply instead. 

“Not you. Not specifically,” he said. “Just Umbers.” That was a lie, but he delivered it perfectly - almost sullenly. Jon Umber’s grin grew back. 

“Well, good,” he said. “The super-injunction still sticks.”

Alys twisted at the hips. 

“I hope you won’t sue me for telling then.”

“You told him?”

“That you killed a man in Ibiza? Not until just now.” She settled back in her skin. Jon felt his bristle. 

“I told you I was innocent!” Smalljon looked appalled. 

“I don’t need you to be innocent, Jon,” Alys snapped back. “I need your help.”

The tone of her voice rang with familiarity and Jon watched as the reactions chased each other across Umber’s face. It seemed as if he were trying very hard not to make another joke, so hard he clamped his teeth shut behind his lips and there was a knot of tension in his jaw. Jon glanced away. Around the room, people were eyeing them - not outrightly, but enough for him to notice. The others who weren’t focused on their games kept checked the half-raised stage. A man in black was sweeping beneath the piano. When he turned back, Smalljon was running a free hand through his hair. 

“ _I need your help,_ ” he repeated, clinking the ice in his glass. One drop of amber clung to the white-cubed dregs. “That how she got you into this mess? That and a look at her knees?” Jon said nothing. He wasn’t sure how to respond. Alys had done something to make her eyes wide and pleading; it was the most natural, the most young, he’d seen her look all night. He prayed that she didn’t feel the probe of his gaze and switch her mask back on. Smalljon rolled his eyes in the silence. 

“Jesus,” he groaned, lifting the last of the alcohol to his lips. “Let’s find a table and you tell me what happened.” He tilted his empty glass in Jon’s direction. “You, I owe a drink.”

Smalljon paid in chips and said nothing while Alys told him about Daryn’s disappearance and the night thus far. Their table was small, shoved into a diamond shaped alcove and banked with green leather chairs. The light was revolving over head, showering them in purple and then blue. Jon was listening for snags in the story. It had become apparent to him that Alys’ motives were somewhat obscured now. If Daryn was likely dead and probably unfaithful, what more did she stand to gain from pursuing the loose ends he’d left behind? He was surprised when she told him that Wyman Manderly was dead, and had taken all the visiting Freys with him. 

For his part, Jon Umber did not react much. He only lifted his hand to his chin when Alys mentioned the woman Daryn had met with at the Mermaid Club and rubbed it back and forth across his jaw. 

When she was finished, Alys pursed her lips. 

“What do you say?” she asked. “You’ve got the clap to protect me and if Robb Stark’s in town, I know you know how to find him.”

“Robb Stark is dead,” Umber said, almost bored. “He’s been dead for months.” 

“Then there’s a resistance,” Alys sighed. “Someone puppeting the name. A pretender. Show me where to look, and maybe I’ll find what Daryn was looking for and maybe that will show me where to go next. Us. Show _us_ where to go. Please. I just want to find him.” 

“So you’ll do what?” Smalljon ventured, and there was something sinister in his voice. “Hold him down so your brothers can castrate him for sneaking around on you? Knowing this town, someone’s probably already done the job for you and chucked the pieces into the river.” 

Alys did not look happy with his response. 

“I hadn’t realised you found me so distrustful, Umber.” She sat back in her chair, fingers twitching for a cigarette and her frosty eyes narrow. “You haven’t been wasting my time on purpose, have you?”

As if he were mocking her, the Smalljon pulled back the sleeve of his suit jacket to check the time on a smooth silver watch. 

“Wish I could be of service, Alley-cat,” he shot her another smug grin, “only I’m afraid you’ve taken up too much of mine. I’ve got business across town later tonight. Strictly secret business. And, besides, it’s nearly one.”

Her face darkened with only a slight pout of those bloody lips. Jon shifted forwards as the lights above flashed red. 

“Why, what happens at one?”

Umber flashed his teeth in a wide smile. He snapped out a hand and grabbed him by the chin, half-brotherly but so quick he wanted to flinch. The other man cracked a laugh and twisted his face back to the open games floor. The lights had dimmed everywhere but the stage, the noise had flushed from the room. The silver instruments gleamed under a spotlight, so bright they made his eyes sting. 

“At one,” the Smalljon said, “she starts to sing.”


	4. THE SONGBIRD / THE MOCKINGBIRD'S DAUGHTER

* * *

 

**THE SONGBIRD**

  
  
She was wearing gold. He’d never seen his little sister wear gold before, never seen her with her hair shining like burnished copper either. Never seen her stand on a stage except once in primary school when she was the angel Gabriel in the Nativity. But that had been years ago. She’d been a little girl then and it was a woman standing up on stage now, swaying with the piano chords.   
  
She’d still been a girl when he’d last seen her, five years ago, when their father and her mother - Robb Stark’s mother - had sent her south to boarding school. Jon had joined the forces when he was nineteen and rarely been home since.   
  
The last time had been a year back - for the funeral - after someone put two bullets in his father’s skull through the window of his limousine. He didn’t stay in the house, but at a hotel; only Robb came to visit him there.  
  
The name Stark had died overnight, cut at the head and drowning the rest in the jugular spurt.  
  
Robb went next, less than a month after his father - gunned down on the street walking home from his uncle’s wedding. He died on the way to hospital. It trickled down from there.  
  
Bran was crippled when the old oak tree in the garden broke its back and his beneath the weight of the wind. They found Arya on the playground with a knife stuffed into her boot and someone else’s blood on her knuckles. Sansa never came home from school at the end of spring. The last he’d heard of her, the papers were calling her the latest victim in the crimes against the rich: murders, kidnappings, ransoms, only not even her corpse ever showed up again. Her mother had bet the house to bring her home but her name had slipped into the currents like a minnow and he hadn’t heard of her since.  
  
But he heard her now.   
  
And someone wanted to kill the Young Wolf.    
  
Sansa was singing about freedom. She made everyone in the room a believer.   
  
Men, women, waiters, stymied old-timers in their black shirt and tails, seemed to crane their necks to listen. She was beautiful, simpering to her audience like a professional, but Jon couldn’t look. His eyes were on everyone else. Even Alys had stopped her fluid fidgeting and looked up, eyes half-lidded and still. The Smalljon looked smitten; his grin had fallen back into response. His expression was serious and his gaze focused. The darkness brought out the shadow of a healing bruise along the crest of his brow. Jon hadn’t seen it before under the coloured lights. The Smalljon’s knuckles were rough from blows. The way his face looked now, Jon couldn’t imagine him harming anyone, but the signs were all there - and the rumours too.   
  
The thawing ice in his glass knocked together and bobbed in the liquors.  
  
 _This house of stone is crumbling fast,_ his sister was singing now. Her voice was deeper than he remembered it, like she’d been smoking cigarettes, or crying. _It’s been a long, long winter, and don't I know you, dear?_  
  
When the set was over, the audience broke into applause. Men got to their feet and whistled. Sansa flirted in the spotlight, never saying anything but thank you.   
  
The moment she stepped back from the microphone, Jon saw a shade of his little sister flicker through her. She looked lost.   
  
“So, Umber, I see you don’t just come here for the poker,” Alys surmised smoothly as the band packed away. Jon felt her leg graze his beneath the table and couldn’t help but feel she had hoped for the other man’s instead.   
  
“She’s the owner’s daughter. They call him the Mockingbird,” Umber said, sipping his drink. His eyes hadn’t left the stage. “She’s something else entirely.”  
  
“Excuse me,” Jon interrupted, getting to his feet. If Alys asked where he was going, he didn’t hear.  
  
 _What do the Starks matter in this city?_ Wyman Manderly had said and Jon had been asking himself the same ever since. The Starks were all gone, Catelyn bundled into her mansion, the boys sent away to school in France somewhere. Arya had skittered off to the States at the beginning of the summer. _Fencing camp,_ her emails said. With their extermination had gone the interests of the Karstarks, the Umbers and all the others who had so long been their friends. The allegiances fizzled and disappeared like moths dying in the light. But here were two old allies he’d found in one night, and now Sansa too. A confluence of icy-boned and stone-blooded outer city folk flooding into the London night. He’d tapped into a vein he’d not realised existed, not even dreamed to think was real, and at the heart of it - maybe - was Robb, with a bullet aimed through his throat. 

 

* * *

  


 

**THE MOCKINGBIRD’S DAUGHTER**

  
  
He swung through one of the service doors and headed into the cool darkness in the direction of the stage. His hands hit the bar of a fire exit and he heard a car starting behind it. Jon pushed through into the back alley just as the engine rolled away and into the street. Panic rose in his throat - Sansa was gone. But he turned and there was a woman standing there, smoking a cigarette.  
  
She saw him first.   
  
“Jon?”  
  
He had her at the wrist in another moment.   
  
“Sansa, what are you doing?”   
  
Her face closed to him as she shook him off, her expression cold and reticent. It had been years, but in that instant he remembered how she was her mother’s daughter. And that he was Snow now, nothing to do with her.  
  
“Shh! Don’t call me that! Why are you here? Why are you dressed like that? Metro police are all meant to be down at Canary Wharf tonight...” She wasn’t wearing a coat. The gold dress glittered in the moonlight. The end of her cigarette hummed and burned.  
  
“I have nothing to answer for,” Jon hissed back at her. “You’re the one who’s been missing for months.”  
  
Now he was closer to her he could see the red-glow of her hair had been an illusion of the stage-glare. It fell in loose, coffee-brown waves around her shoulders. Why, he had no idea. Sansa had always had such lovely auburn hair.   
  
“Maybe I haven’t been missing,” she said around her cigarette; her voice was softer. “Maybe I ran away.”   
  
“What, to sing to criminals by night and leave your mother waiting for the day someone sends her your head in a box? I don’t like ‘maybe’s, Sansa. _Robb’s alive_.” It slipped out before he’d realised it, like he’d been desperate to say it.  
  
She stilled, breathing smoke out into the air.  
  
“Robb?” It was like she hadn’t heard his name in a long, long time. Jon stared at her through the darkness.   
  
“He’s been hiding, San, and someone wants him dead,” he started, breath splitting against bared teeth. “I don’t know who. The Greyjoys. The Freys. Someone. Maybe tonight.” The currents were moving fast, the loose ends all tangling together in his mind.  
  
Sansa’s eyes were like opals in the close light.   
  
“I know,” her voice was a whisper.   
  
There was a noise behind them, scuffing feet on concrete, before Jon could ask what that meant. When he twisted back, Alys and the Smalljon were silhouetted in the fire exit doorway.  
  
“Here you are,” he heard her surmise.   
  
“What’s going on here?” Jon Umber said, taking a step forwards. His mind went blank; the instinct was always to tell the truth, but he didn’t know quite what it was this time.   
  
“Everything’s fine,” Sansa saved him. Her voice was like it had been on stage now, all throaty and confident. “Just an old friend of mine saying hello.” She dusted something off Jon’s lapel, like a flourish to the lie. _It’s only half a lie,_ Jon thought, sourly.    
  
“You’re full of surprises, Snow,” Alys said, lowly, from the back of the alley.   
  
The Smalljon was shrugging off his jacket.   
  
“Nothing’s fine. You’re cold,” he handed her the coat and Sansa glanced at it nervously. She seemed about to protest but her manners got the better of her. She slipped it on around her shoulders.   
  
“You’re sweet,” she said, smooth as butter. She looked over to Alys: “I’m Alayne. Stone. It’s nice to meet you.”  
  
“Stone and Snow,” Smalljon smiled, like it was a joke. “Aren’t you two a pair of obstacles?”   
  
Sansa returned the expression half-heartedly and stamped out her cigarette. Jon realised she only take two or three drags at the most.  
  
“I should go,” she said. Her steps were heading backwards, towards the green fire escape steps to the flat above. “My father doesn’t like me speaking to clientele for too long.”   
  
“The Mockingbird?” Jon echoed. More questions were gathering up on his lips, like who was that and why she was calling him father.  
  
Sansa didn’t react. He was watching her face for signs of pain.  
  
“Yes,” she said, her face still as a mask. Her eyes moved back to the Smalljon. “Would you like your coat back?” Umber looked uncomfortable protesting, like he was unused to girls trying to shrug out of his compliments. _I’m a regular,_ he said. _I’ll pick it up next time._ Five years ago had made little difference. Boys had always tripped over their tongues to get to Sansa. She seemed more adept to coping with it now though - with another smile, she silenced him, and then she turned back to Jon.   
  
There was ice behind her eyes. That was new.  
  
“It was nice to see you, Snow,” she murmured, her voice stressing his surname just slightly. She leaned up and kissed him on the cheek, and as she did, he heard her whisper something in his ear.   
  
‘ _Follow him.’_  
  
Then she disappeared up the stairs and into the upstairs flat and out of sight. Jon was not sure she had even been his sister at all.  
  
“We should go,” Alys said, quickly. “There’s nothing here.” Jon looked back at her. Her dress flashed like piranha scales in the darkness. She seemed angry, but this time he was sure her frustrations were directed at the Umber boy.   
  
He gave her a nod.   
  
“Watch your step with this one,” the Smalljon told him. “The more men want a woman, the more power she has over them.” Alys did not look at all flattered.   
  
“I never expected you to be so damning of the fairer sex,” she sneered.   
  
“Oh, I’m not damning,” Smalljon put up his hands. “You know I like them domineering.”   
  
“Where are you off to now? With your secret business?” Jon asked him, trying to keep his voice casual. The other gave him a knowing grin.   
  
“Bloomsbury,” he said, shortly. “If you hear no more of me, assume I’ve made off with an student.”  
  
“I always do,” Alys sounded like there was a laugh in her voice. He couldn’t see her face to be sure. The Smalljon faded back into the club in search of a new dinner jacket. Jon had the feeling he’d easily swipe one off the back of some patron’s chair and dart out before anyone missed it. Rich boys like to play at being poor; he’d learned that growing up.   
  
Turning to face Alys, he rubbed away the memory of Sansa’s kiss from his cheek.   
  
“We should follow him,” he said. She balked.   
  
“Why? He’s probably off to knock boots with some hotelier’s wife.” Instinctively, Jon put a hand against her arm. The stiffness went out of her. “Please, I’m tired. I just want to go home. It was a good run, Jon, but there’s no more road.”  
  
He’s been seeing it for a while now, how short her fuse was burning. She’d come towards him crying for her missing fiancé and now that he was likely dead from chasing shadows and giving her the run-around with some other girl, her sore feet won out over love. If it even had been love. _Karstarks are loyal._ Maybe it was all just a principle she’d told herself she’d follow.   
  
But that elusive shadow had his brother’s face. She had no idea. He was just a wide-eyed boy to her, though she had her hand pressed to his chest now, her fingers crooked, half-beckoning. The cotton felt thin under the heat of her palm. _Snow. Snow._ Even Sansa had called him that - and that was a whole other issue altogether.   
  
 _Follow him,_ she’d said, and he did want to. If Robb was alive he had to know. If Robb was in danger he had to see for himself. But he also wanted to lean in and kiss her lips and the column of her throat. Her eyes seemed to beg him to choose her, warm and soft and real against him rather than the flickering ghost of a brother he’d seen dead and buried.  
  
“I’ll get you a taxi,” he said, each word weighing an ocean on his tongue. His only reward was a thin smile that he told himself looked disappointed. Her hand slipped back.   
  
“You’re so cold, Snow,” she surmised, stepping away from him towards the mouth of the alley and the main street beyond. Silver winked at her hips. He followed her in silence and then onto the asphalt to look out into the traffic.   
  
It was closer to two now than one, and the sky was hung with a distended smear of aquamarine clouds against the black night. There was a taxi coming with an amber light in its sign. He would have raised his hand to call it over, to let it take Alys away so that he could chase shadows long into the night, had something not made him stop.   
  
Back on the pavement, Alys let out a bloodchilling scream.


	5. TURNCLOAK / BANKS OF THE RIVER

* * *

 

**TURNCLOAK**

  
  
He knew the man by his smile at once. Perhaps he'd expected Alys to be coerced far more easily - his rough fingers were caught about her arm, as if he made to drag her off down the street with his hand clamped over her mouth to keep her quiet. Her red lipstick was smeared down her chin from his grip, teeth bared and arms forced straight in the struggle.  
  
It gave Jon more joy than he'd expected to pull back a fist and slam it into the assailant's face. His knuckles scraped spit and teeth. The man fell back but Jon caught him by the coat, throwing him against the glossy Mayfair bricks and into the sharp cut of the street light.  
  
" _Theon_ ," he snarled.  
  
In the darkness, the boy was grinning. Always grinning, even when Jon was sure he'd knocked a few of his teeth loose.  
  
"Jon!" he cried round the pain. "Fancy running into you-" Jon pressed his elbow up into his throat and the smiling stopped.   
  
“This one’s a Greyjoy,” Alys said behind him, stepping up to his shoulder. “I can taste the salt in his blood.” She spat and wiped the lipstick off her chin. Only, it wasn't lipstick - it was blood. Theon's hand was bleeding where she'd bitten him, crimson trickling down his wrist and into his sleeve, soaking the cotton round his elbow.   
  
"Another of your friends, Snow?"  
  
"So to speak."  
  
"He came up behind me," she muttered, "out of the alley. Do you think he's been waiting for us?"  
  
"I think he's been following us," Jon said, quietly. Then: “I heard you’d gotten out of prison, Greyjoy. I didn’t think you’d turn up skulking around again.”  
  
"Take your arm off my windpipe and I'll tell you," Theon croaked through a closing throat. Jon debated and then relented. Greyjoy sagged against the wall but didn't move. He sucked the blood off his hand and breathed in hard through his nose. "Maybe I'll report you for police brutality," he hissed, "you _bastard_." Jon lunged for him again but it was only a threat. Greyjoy went for the bait, throwing up his hands. Made sense. He always had been a bit of a coward once it came down to it; though he liked to cover up the fact with a violent grin and a penchant for name calling. Hatred seethed in his stomach.  
  
Alys opened her clutch, pulling out the revolver and pointing it at him. Jon couldn't stop her. Or blame her, really. His eyes moved back to the traffic, but no cars slowed to rubberneck them as they turned the corner.  
  
"Start talking," she snapped. Theon Greyjoy threw back his head and laughed. "What's funny now?" Her blood-red mouth was a wax seal of distaste.  
  
"Oh just that," he heaved air in though the chest spasms, "I almost mistook you for a Mormont there. Only I suppose that's the joke, isn't it? Why your boyfriend's gone?"  
  
"What is that supposed to mean?" Her fingers twitched on the trigger.  
  
"Talk," Jon said, trying to severe the distraction. "Why were you waiting here for us?"  
  
Theon's gaze snapped back.  
  
"I've been following you since Southbank," he said. "I was on plan to take the Manderly girls to their Ritz suite, but when I overheard what they told you, things changed." He leaned his head against the wall, straightening his neck to let the air in better. “Someone wants the Young Wolf dead. _Ohhh_ , you were never meant to find out.” Jon narrowed his eyes.   
  
"You know about the Manderlys?"  
  
A ghost of a smile touched Theon's lips.  
  
"Who do you think told the Freys that they were the ones to watch? They've been on my tail too since even before my father washed up and now the fat man's solved all my problems for me. I told Wynnie months ago and she said she’d seduce the Rhaegar to help me along." He chuckled. "I wasn't expecting Wylla to spill so many secrets though. I always told her ‘loose lips sink ships’. Only I suppose that’s a mermaid’s prerogative.”   
  
He thought himself so witty. Jon’s stomach twisted.   
  
“You're poking your nose where it shouldn't be. I thought I'd try to distract you while the Smalljon got away so you couldn’t tail him."   
  
As if on cue there was the purr of an engine down the street outside the glowing club entrance and a taxi sped off into the night. Jon didn’t doubt he’d missed his window. He pushed his hands into Theon’s collar and shoved him against the wall again.   
  
“Where do your loyalties lie, Greyjoy?” he scathed. “Today, tomorrow? Are they ever the same twice?”  
  
“With himself,” Alys said, similarly tense. Theon’s sandy hair was rough and blue in the night light. His shirt clung to him with sweat and blood.   
  
“With _Robb_ ,” he said, voice rough.  
  
“Then he’s alive?” Alys’ arm slackened, the gun falling to her side. Theon’s eyes darted between them.   
  
“Everyone’s got secrets to keep.” His gaze settled on Alys. “Even this boy here.”  
  
“I’m an open book,” Jon said, hazardous.   
  
“Yes, one so dull that no-one’s bothering to read it, _Snow_ ,” Theon’s eyebrows arched. Jon was tempted to hit him again. If his mouth was full of blood then Balon Greyjoy’s son surely couldn’t give him away. It wouldn’t be fair, for everyone else to have secrets when his were gutted and splayed open.  
  
He could feel Alys’ razor eyes scouring him.   
  
“Why are you keeping us away? She’s a Karstark, and I’m- Well, we’re allies to the cause, aren’t we?” A stricken look passed across Theon’s face.   
  
“Be _cause_ ,” he groaned, “that was the deal the Hornwood kid cooked up for his services. Keep Alys Karstark stupid and keep her safe. I promised to help keep her away, like I did with the Manderly girls too. And, besides, police like you can’t be trusted.”  
  
“What?” Alys’ voice stabbed back into the air. “What deal? What services?”  
  
Jon didn’t want to hear what Theon wasn’t saying. He might have imagined it. The way Theon’s tone was telling him _it’s_ _because Robb doesn’t want to see you get hurt._  
  
“Why do you think Manderly told you to get gone?” Theon grimaced. He gestured at her dress. “You weren’t exactly subtle, going in there shiny as a new coin. The only reason you know anything is because you made yourself too noticeable. The fat man thought he’d give you a gun and a fighting chance rather than send you off like a lamb to the slaughter.” He shook his head. “Then you came here. To a club full of crooks and enemies. It’s a wonder you’re not dead already.” He seemed to have finally caught his breath and his smile shrank with it.  
  
“You go any further and you’ll get hurt for sure. Wynafryd told you true. You should be getting out of town _._ Jon Umber did his best to throw you off the scent. Why are you still pressing it? It’s better not to know...”  
  
It was like he was daring Jon to say it. _Because Robb’s my brother._ In truth he hardly knew if that was the reason. But Sansa had said _follow Jon Umber_ , and also that she already knew about all the plates spinning in the air… _You know nothing_ , the Sergeant had told him. But he had to know. Had to.   
  
Alys raised her gun.   
  
“I’m suddenly tired of secrets,” was all she said. Jon felt the words roll around in his chest. The barrel of the gun pressed into Greyjoy’s cheek.  
  
“I have a duty to investigate when I’m told there’s an assassination planned,” he said, bland as he could. Theon scowled.   
  
“Police can’t be trusted,” he said again, like a sullen boy. “And I have a promise to keep.”  
  
“I don’t trust you either.”  
  
“Then what makes you think I’ll show you where the Young Wolf is?” Theon grinned, proud of his logic. Jon clenched his teeth.   
  
“Because Alys has a gun in your face,” he muttered. “And because you don’t have enough honour to keep your promises. Even those made to Robb Stark.” 

  

* * *

 

 

**BANKS OF THE RIVER**

  
  
Theon led them through the lobby of one of the Russell Square hotels, across the Persian carpets and into the service lift. Alys was quieter than she had been before. It was a long time they’d been up now; their senses were dulled and the later it got the more need there was to keep them sharp. Jon saw noticed her white-knuckle grip on her clutch and the gun inside as they moved through the deserted reception. The night manager barely registered them.   
  
“Underground again?” she said as Theon punched the basement call button.   
  
“Makes the burials easier,” he hissed.   
  
 _Men like Balon Greyjoy_ don’t jump, Jon thought as the carriage dragged them down. _Men like Balon Greyjoy have sons like Theon Greyjoy._ There was nothing here that put him at ease.   
The service hallways were white tiled and bright but diving two more swing doors, they were moving through shadowier places and there was a mildew scent ribboning through the air. The darkness made him nostalgic for the bioluminescent glow of the Mermaid Club.  
  
There were stairs up and the smell thinned as they climbed. Alys’ heels echoed against the naked bricks. Beyond them, he could hear water rushing like they were walking over the ocean.   
  
“The River Fleet runs underground here,” Theon barked though no one asked. “The street is built along it.”  
  
He seemed to be smarting from having been called a traitor. He said nothing for most of the walk and didn’t look back at they went. Jon was sure he’d called him worse growing up; the older boy had broken his nose twice for talking back but Robb could always call him to heel.   
  
“It’s just up here,” he suddenly grunted. “Everyone has to come through the hotel incase they’re being followed.” He pushed through a door and into a dimly lit room. Jon stopped short as he felt the temperature drop. The walls here were lined with glass fronted racks full of bottles.   
  
“This is a wine cellar,” he said, dumbly. That gave cause for Greyjoy to smile again.   
  
“You’re observant, Snow,” he raised an eyebrow. “But not by much.” His feet hit carpeted stairs and he padded up them and out of sight. Above them, muffled through the floor boards, Jon could hear laughter and glasses clinking. He felt Alys’ breath on his neck.   
  
“How many bullets do you have in your gun?” she asked him, eyes hollowed out like sea shells.   
  
“Six,” he responded, automatic as the firing. “Standard issue.”   
  
She nodded, solemnly.   
  
“Count them slow, won’t you? Strange sort of night. Men rising from the dead.”  
  
If they were walking into a trap, he wanted a taste of her lips first. Alys stepped back and denied him the chance. Slowly he followed her up the stairs.


	6. NOT TODAY

* * *

 

 

**NOT TODAY**

 

“Bring them forwards. I want everyone to hear what they've done.”  
  
The north moors made men cold and fierce, but they steeped Robb’s blood in melancholy too. He recognized the voice as soon as he heard it. It was the same one that tamed Greyjoy when Jon’s face and chest were stinging from his fists.   
  
He reached out to Alys, but the sequins of her dress slipped between his fingers like tiny pearls and he let her lead him up and out.  
  
The room was full, but not crowded. He had worried about being recognized, but the faces around him were only as familiar as their black-and-white newspaper reprints. Jon was sure their names would be familiar to him too, and that they might know his if prompted, but he had left the North long before his father’s friends had begun to take particular note of his children. He’d come to London as a boy, but he was a man now. At least, he hoped.   
  
As it was, none of the assembled company saw them come up from the wine cellar and into the cleared out restaurant balcony, threading themselves between the still statues of other northern men come to pay reverence to the Stark boy’s corpse.

Alys reached the edge first, putting her hands against the bannister. Jon was looking for where Theon had gone, but there was movement in the pit down below and he turned to look past her shoulder and saw his brother get to his feet.   
  
Robb’s hair looked bloody red in the glow; his skin looked pale, his suit a heavy-black like a shroud. He sat in a tall-backed chair in front of a round dinner table marked over by wine stains and glass rings. Next to him was an empty seat; next to that he recognized Patrek Mallister, leaning back on one chair leg, his weight against a second table. Beside him, Lucas Blackwood squeeze a lemon into his drink. Behind them, Jon recognized Dacey Mormont; her dress emerald green and her face drawn tight and serious. She stood straight and tall, arms folded one over the other with her phone screen flashing with messages. The Smalljon stood beside her, nursing a clear cocktail. There were others, too, at least a dozen, attending the clutch of VIP tables just before the old, undusted bandstand; seated, watching over steepled fingers, standing at alert. Flints, Norreys, Glovers, Reeds… Jon remembered them all the better the longer he looked.  
  
Alys drew quick breath. _I know_ , he wanted to whisper to her but she twisted his way like she was shielding her eyes.   
  
Two men appeared, pushed into the gathering. They had square shoulders and guilty faces.   
  
“Torrhen,” his brother started. “Eddard. Won’t you tell us all what’s become of Daryn Hornwood?”  
  
Alys whipped back, her knuckles flushing white against the railing. _Karstarks,_ Jon remembered. They were her brothers.   
  
The elder of the two men spat at the Young Wolf’s feet and the assembled guard flinched for their weapons, concealed beneath coats and shirts. Only his brother was still.   
  
Jon squinted. Robb’s face was set like a death mask. His eyes looked empty and his lips were stitched up with a grim smile. Theon Greyjoy slipped in beside him, whispering something in his ear before he sat back in the vacant chair on his right. Robb’s eyes passed up over the crowd and, when Jon felt them register him, they were just as cold as Alys’ had been. Just as quickly, his elder brother looked away.   
  
“He deserved his punishment,” the younger of the two men said, firmly.   
  
 _So you’ll do what?_ the Smalljon had said the last time Alys had mentioned her fiancé’s name. _Hold him down so your brothers can castrate him for sneaking around on you?_ He put his hand on her arm, but she was cold to the touch, staring straight ahead at the back of her brothers’ heads.   
  
“For what?” Dacey Mormont spoke as if she had not meant to, but her voice caught confidence fast. “ _Loyalty_?”  
  
“Disrespect,” Eddard snarled. “And you’d suffer the same, bitch, if you-”  
  
“If what?” the Smalljon cut through with a frosty grin. “If she couldn’t shoot you between the eyes?”  
  
“You two were the last people to see Hornwood alive,” Robb spoke up, unimpressed, “after Dacey took him to the Greyjoy Tower.” He paused, biding his time. “Did you leave him that way?”  
  
“Barely,” Torrhen answered, so short and so sharp he might have barked it. Jon felt the muscles shunt in Alys’ arm. He wanted to pull her back from the edge before she was seen. Umber only had to look up and he’d see the dazzle of her dress. What would happen after that, he wasn’t sure.   
  
Robb leaned forwards in his chair.  
  
“And who told you where he’d be that night?” he asked, darkly. “Was it your honourable father, boys?” _Boys._ As if he were older than either of them. Jon tasted tar in his throat, thick and clogging.   
  
The men said nothing. Eddard shuffled his feet.   
  
“Until one of them shows up, Lord Rickard or Hornwood,” Robb said. “I’m holding the two of you responsible for murder.” His gaze turned up to the balcony, to the court of watching northerners. “Let that be the next story that spreads through London. That every Karstark is a liar until he proves himself true.”   
  
Jon’s hand slipped around Alys’ shoulder. She was immoveable as stone and he couldn’t see her face to be sure.   
  
“Back to it,” Robb announced once the Karstark men had been taken away between Mallister and Blackwood. “This isn’t a wake. Not until there’s a body found.” He paused and his crowd waited. “And even then, death may not be final.”  
  
His audience did not expect him to be light-hearted. Only a few of them laughed and those that did let the sound roll about in their bellies. The crowd faded back from the edge, settled back into clumps. Hands found drinks and someone started to carve a leg of ham into thin, wet rounds. It was a party again; a quiet celebration. In the foyer below, the tension had yet to dissipate from Robb’s collective. They wrapped their lips around glasses and mumbled to one another. Theon Greyjoy was at Robb’s ear again, saying something that made him smile.   
  
A waiter brought them champagne and a bucket of ice for the bottle. Another came with glasses.   
  
Alys slipped out from under his hand again.   
  
“Stop,” Jon said at once.   
  
“No,” she fired back. The crowd swallowed her up before he could say anything else. Jon wasn’t sure how guarded to be anymore. The only thing that protected him here was five years of disassociation and a five o’clock shadow. Her dress winked at him ahead and he followed, no longer aware that he cared.   
  
Alys found stairs, looping down them towards the assembly at the foot of the stage. They were all standing now, Robb with his back to her and champagne in hand.   
  
“So it’s true then,” she snapped the moment she felt the heat of Jon at her back. “The dead do walk.”   
  
Robb turned, slow, and Jon remembered why they’d first started to call him ‘wolf’.   
  
“Alys Karstark,” he said, without acknowledging his brother.   
  
Smalljon had her by the hand within in a second.   
  
“Get out of here,” he growled. “Both of you.”  
  
“Leave it, Umber.” Robb’s voice was enough for release. Alys did not look so persuaded. Her eyes blazed.   
  
Jon’s brother did not smile.   
  
“There’s a reason you’ve been left out of this,” he hissed, putting down his glass. Theon was watching them, quiet. “Your father-”  
  
“My father did what?” she sung right back. “What did they do? My brothers?”  
  
Robb’s mouth sealed shut like he didn’t know what to do with a woman. It was Dacey Mormont who spoke instead.   
  
“Lucas and I found them wandering through Hackney,” she said, somber. Her eyebrows were sharp as daggers and she had cheekbones to match. “They beat your fiancé black and blue and dumped him in the marshes.”  
  
“They haven’t said that.” Jon Umber earned a glare from the two of them.   
  
“They don’t need to,” Dacey told him. Her eyes flicked back over Alys and then to Jon. “Men love defending Alys Karstark. Even her own brothers.” That kept all of them quiet for a moment.   
  
“Manderly was meant to send you off back home,” Robb finally said, gravely.   
  
“Manderly’s dead,” Theon told him.   
  
“He knows,” the Smalljon added. “I already said. Alys would probably be dead if she’d gone home tonight.”  
  
“Wylla and Wynafryd?”  
  
“Hallis is with them at the Ritz. Taking them back north tomorrow.”  
  
Jon remembered his brother’s eyes used to be so blue, but now they were the same way Sansa’s had been - steely-gray like ice chips. He wondered if he knew that she was alive too. If anyone else knew that Sansa was alive but him. That’d be the first thing he’d tell him, as soon as he finally looked at him.   
  
His brother looked pained at the mention, then angry within the blink of an eye.   
  
“Then why did you show them the way here, Theon?” he asked, looking back as his oldest friend.   
  
“I made him,” Jon said, finally. Robb glared at him as if he did not remember what it was like to have a younger brother.   
  
“You should’ve known better,” he snapped. “ _You’re_ sworn to protect-”  
  
“-the innocent.” Theon finished for him. For some reason, that went un-punished. Greyjoy smiled, slowly. That same stinking smile he’d always worn. “No one here is innocent, Jon _Stark_.”   
  
There it was. His secret flung into the open like a loose ribbon on the wind. Jon barely even felt it slip. The only sensation was the weight of Alys’ eyes as she looked up at him. She looked lost, her lips parted with a question.  
  
The Smalljon suddenly laughed. Jon saw the flash of a gun handle beneath his newfound suit jacket. It was true, then, he supposed - better suits make better disguises.  
  
“That’s who you are,” he said, pointing at him round his champagne glass, the same way he had at the Mockingbird’s casino, “Ned Stark’s bastard son.”   
  
“Snow,” Alys murmured. Not a question. Just a kenning.  
  
“We were probably followed,” Theon said, stoically. Robb didn’t move, he just stared straight ahead like he could carve bullet holes through Jon’s chest with just a look.   
  
“Good,” he said, finally.   
  
Alys turned with a flick of flower-scented hair.   
  
“Wait! But the river-”  
  
She never finished.

The sound of a bullet cracking out of the end of a pistol stopped her mid-sentence. Jon heard it and then a grunt and a scream as it found a victim, somewhere in the balcony crowd.

Chaos erupted. A wave of northerners went running for the exits. Glasses smashed, plates flew across the room. The sound of bullets came like a timpani. Smalljon had his gun out in an instant, and the other guards were the same. Jon fumbled for his and whirled back towards the stairs.

Another gunshot – this time too close. It severed the floorboards on the stage, sending splinters into the air. 

“Get down!” Jon Umber shouted. His foot connected with the table leg and sent the champagne glasses raining to the carpet. The wood fell down over Robb and he hit the floor as the bullets punched into the varnished tabletop.   
Jon couldn’t pick out how many shooters there were. The guns were fast, automatic and loud as lightning. He fired around the barriers. Bodies were slammed up against the bannisters; one corpse thrown down the stairs. He fired once: _one._ Alys had her revolver out, arms straight out before her. Someone was screaming, and then, suddenly, it was her.  _Two. Three._

There was blood on his hands, blood running through glass and nylon and smoke, and he could hear men shouting his brother’s name. _Four._

“Get out!” Theon - or someone - was shouting. “Get out! I said get out of here!” _Five._ The back of the stage seemed suddenly empty. The green of Dacey Mormont’s dress was absent in the gray haze. He couldn’t see the red of Robb’s hair. Someone was bleeding on him. The guns were… silent. 

The air smelled like fire, full of glass-dust and smoke. It was like a war. His eyes were stinging. He’d slipped on glass and pulled a scar into his arm. The gun felt heavy in his hand though he registered how almost all the bullets were gone. 

And Robb was gone too, like half of his banners with him. Where they’d gone he had no idea.

“ _Snow_ ,”Smalljon hissed into his ear, grabbing him at the collar. All he could hear was the sound of groaning as people died and the pitter patter of falling plaster. Up on the balcony, someone whistled for all the gunmen to disperse. Jon heard running. Then he heard nothing at all. 

“Get her out of here,” Jon Umber shook his shoulder until he saw it was Alys who was bleeding. The skirt of her dress was drenched scarlet, her leg fallen out from under the weight of her body. She had her fingernails dug into his arm. Blood rose in the carbon pricks. 

“I can walk,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Don’t be a moron. You’ve been shot.”

“Shut your mouth.” Jon Umber might have laughed had the circumstances been different. 

“Get out of here - now. Under the stage. There’s a way back into the street. Go somewhere no one will find you.” There was sweat in his hair and blood running down his cheek. 

“Where’s Robb?” Jon shouted over the din in his ears. He pulled Alys towards him and into his arms. Umber did laugh then. 

“That’s enough secrets for one night, Jon Stark.” He disappeared into the smoke. 


	7. THE WALL

 

* * *

 

  
**THE WALL**

 

  
  
In the end he didn’t know what to do but flash his police badge to a hapless hackney cabbie and demand he be taken to Islington. The hospitals wouldn’t be safe, he figured, if there were killers on the loose and he was not sure if any of them would fight on his side. Alys refused to lose consciousness on the way, though there was blood running into her shoes and soaking into the upholstery. She kept the heel of her palm pressed into her thigh and her teeth closed so tight he thought she’d crack her jaw before she cried out in pain again.   
  
His flat was little more than a studio with a hot plate. The pub across the way flashed its neon sign up through his window all through the night, pink and white, reflected backwards in the glass: _The Wall. Authentic English fish and chips. Lager served all day._  
  
Jon carried her up the drafty stairs to the sound of police sirens wailing into the dark. When he opened the door, she pushed herself out of his arms.   
  
“I’m fine,” she said, her voice breaking, stumbling forwards. “I’m fine, Snow- Jon.”  
  
“Did the bullet-”  
  
“I’d be screaming,” Alys’ eyes were shining and wild. “It’s just a scratch. Where’s the bathroom?”   
  
He toweled the blood off his hands listening to the sound of the shower sputtering into life after she went inside. Alys seemed tiger-like in her injury, angry and ashamed. Somehow, he’d convinced her not to lock the door. ( _“If you pass out-”_  
  
 _“I won’t pass out. I just need to wash up”_  
  
 _She still didn’t lock the door._ )  
  
Jon stripped off his cheap coat, the gun holster and his shirt down to his vest. The pistol he left out on the countertop. The black jabbed sharp against the blue-tile; a cruel reminder that he’d be reprimanded for that tomorrow. He’d have to go back to the station in the morning and turn it in and accept the cane across the knuckles.   
  
There was a clunk as something fell against the sink.   
  
“Alys?”  
  
She didn’t reply so he knocked, and even then Alys was quiet. Jon waited another moment to say her name again and then his fears got the best of him and he turned the handle.   
  
Alys Karstark was slumped against the wall, her legs the bath and the water running foggy and red. Her dress stood in a pool of silver and scarlet on the white linoleum, drawing streaks of blood. She’d stripped down to her underwear. Black against her bloodless skin, stockings and garter stirrups stretching down her thighs to the bloody gash above her knee. She’d dropped the shower head and her eyes were rolling.   
  
“You’re-” Jon started and then his feet moved for him. He sat on the edge of the tub, pulling her body straight and fishing the handset out of the bloody water. “Alys? You alright?”  
  
“Dandy, Snow,” she hiccuped, taking the chain out of his hand and pressing the water down over the tear in her skin. “It just slipped. Don’t give up on me yet.” It was really only just a scratch - the bullet must of ricocheted, pulling her skin open with it.   
  
“You need stitches,” Jon said. There were water droplets on her skin, up her bare stomach and between her breasts. The red of her lipstick had yet to fade. He almost gave her an encouraging smile.   
  
“I don’t want to go to hospital.”  
  
“It’s fine.”   
  
“Blood in the water,” Alys said, listless. “Always brings the sharks.”  
  
He got back to his feet and washed the rest of the blood from the cracks in his palms in the china basin. Under the sink there was a first aid kit with a bottle of rubbing alcohol, gauze, needles and thread.   
  
“You got a medical degree, Jon?” she gave him a dizzy smile.   
  
“My little sister gets a lot of cuts and bruises.”  
  
He put the bottle down on the floor by the bath and broke off the thread with his teeth.   
  
“Which sister is this?” Alys asked, her voice wavering. “The youngest one, or the one who’s been missing for months? Sansa? That was her name, right?”   
  
 _Was._ He wasn’t sure what to tell her.  
  
“Sorry,” he decided on at last. When he turned back, Alys looked less than amused, but the water was running a dull pink down the plughole.   
  
“How’d you end up as Snow?” she asked. He sat back down beside her, needle between his thumb and finger. Alys Karstark did not look afraid. She looked weary. And close to naked. Her diamond earrings glittered.  
  
“Five years back,” he said, “I came to London. I didn’t want to be Ned Stark’s bastard kid anymore. And after he got shot, after Robb died, there was no good reason to mention I’d ever been anything else. It was safer not to be a Stark.” Jon soaked gauze in the alcohol. “After tonight, I still don’t think it’s safe. Turn the water off.”   
  
“What are you going to do?”  
  
“It won’t stop bleeding until I close it. You’ve already lost a lot of blood.”  
  
Without her dress on, Alys seemed less ashamed of being vulnerable. For some reason, it didn’t surprise him, and when she leaned across him to twist the taps he ran his fingertips through her hair. Her smile was proud after that.   
  
“Got any alcohol a girl can drink instead?” she asked and he sopped up the blood off her leg with the alcohol.   
  
“It’ll thin your blood,” he muttered and slid the stocking down past her knee. The bloody nettling flexed like a gasoline shine, but when it was gone, he slipped clean needle through her skin. Alys screamed for breath and dug her fingers into his shoulders. Pain shot through his back, but he didn’t mind.   
  
“ _Jesus,_ you’re no fun,” she said and there were tears in her eyes when he looked up. “How long is this going to take?”  
  
Jon pulled the thread up through her skin. The wound pulled like a sickly mockery of her red-lipped smile.   
  
“Just talk through it,” he told her.   
  
“Who do you think was shooting back there?”  
  
He looked up, pensive.   
  
“I don’t know. Freys, maybe? Other Greyjoys? Whoever it is, if they want Robb dead again they managed not to hit him.”  
  
“Umber did seem calm for a man who’d just emptied a clip into a crowd,” she mused.   
  
“Keep talking,” he said, when she fell quiet again.   
  
“What do you want me to say?”  
  
He could think of a lot of things.   
  
“Tell me about Daryn Hornwood.” Why he picked that one, he wasn’t sure. His vest was soaked through in places from her wet hands, but her skin was picking up colour again. It probably had to do with the fluctuation of her passion. She’d cried for her fiancé, sought to avenge him, given up on him, and demanded to know everything about him in the course of a few hours. Her brothers had, perhaps, killed him for straying from her side, but she’d never expressed much sadness over that particular fact.   
  
Alys rolled her eyes, but it might have only been from the pain.   
  
“Lying scumbag,” she said, deliberately. “Probably met a miserable end. Probably my fault. Maybe.” Jon pushed the needle through her flesh again and she writhed up against him.   
  
“Keep talking.”  
  
“I met him when I was eighteen,” she said, breathless. “Some Stark party. He had these big Arctic blue eyes and a smile like he was always amazed. I wanted him straight away, so I did the same thing I always did whenever I wanted something. I asked my father to get him for me if I was well-behaved. Torrhen took him on as a trainee in the firm but after we got engaged he quit and went to work for the paper instead. _Ow._ That was only three months after.”  
  
“Your father didn’t like that?” The smell of blood was washing away. Her hand on his shoulder relaxed again.   
  
“No. Not very much. But it didn’t matter. I didn’t mind a long engagement,” her breath was short suddenly. He curved the needle back around. “But after four years or so, I suppose we got tired of asking. Daryn did his work. I went traveling, I met people, I went to parties with him. It was quite nice,” she hissed, sharply, air whistling over her teeth. “But it was boring.”   
  
“Is this where Jon Umber comes into the picture?” He found his shoulders felt lighter after asking. Alys laughed, throat-full and dizzing.   
  
“Oh God, no, that was just the once. Daryn forgave me for that. Do you think Dacey Mormont’s the one he was leaving me for?”   
  
The question caught him off-guard.   
  
“I don’t know why anyone would ever leave you.” He looked up at her. Alys’ smile shrank.   
  
“You’re sweet, Snow. _Stark,_ I mean.But you don’t know me very well.”  
  
Jon didn’t care.   
  
“I’m almost done.”   
  
He wove the needle back in a loop to tie it off and cut the thread with scissors. The black thread stood out sharp against her skin like the lace, but at least the bleeding had stopped. It was easier than riot head wounds. Wounds closer to the eyes and ears were the worst kind.  
  
“I think you know all my secrets now,” Alys said, dropping her elbows between them so that her hands slid forwards across his wet shoulders when he sat up. “Thank you.” There were tears rolling down her cheeks but he wiped them back.  
  
“How’s the pain?”  
  
“Oh so very bad.”  
  
“I think I have some gin somewhere.”   
  
Alys stumbled to the bed and sat down to work off her diamond ring. She put it down on the counter next to the gun and taped gauze down over her leg. Jon filled a plastic cup for her and gave it to her straight. She said nothing for a while until he sat down beside her and the box springs squeaked.   
  
His mind wandered back to Robb, to the last thing he’d said. _They were probably followed. Good._ And then gunfire. And where was he now?  
  
“Do you think my brothers killed Daryn?” she asked, quietly.   
  
“I don’t know your brothers very well.”  
  
“You know of my father, though,” Alys said. “That’s what you said. When I told you my name.” He nodded, not sure what she was asking. Alys pressed her lips together and blinked, slowly. “Do you think he’d kill someone for breaking his word to me?”  
  
“You Karstarks are more loyal to one another than anyone else,” Jon said after a while. If the crimes of Torrhen and Eddard had proved anything, it was that. Alys laughed.   
  
“He’s not been loyal to me. If he were loyal, he’d have told me himself and let me the judge of the matter.” Her eyes narrowed. “The same way your dear dead brother keeps no women by himself except that she-bear Mormont. No one expects a girl like me to scare anyone into submission.” She necked the last of her drink and laid down, body stretched out like a cat’s.  
  
“ _Every Karstark’s a liar until he proves himself true_ ,” she whispered. Robb’s order was like a incantation.   
  
Jon watched as her face turned placid. The pink and white flashes through the window from the Wall were made cold by the first cracks of the breaking dawn. The clock on his bedside said it was inching past four in the morning now. It had been a long night. He had the feeling the next day would feel too short.   
  
“You sleep,” he muttered. “Tomorrow, you can take Robb’s terms to your father.”  
  
Alys smiled and sighed.  
  
“Yes,” she said. “Let him be scared of me.”  
  
He leaned down to kiss her.   
  
Her mouth tasted like gin and lipstick, and the tang of blood and nicotine. Her hair smelled like gunpowder. She didn’t call him Snow or Stark after that, but told him straight when to peel the shirt off his back and ease his waistband over his hips and climb over her again.   
  
He moved slowly down her stomach to her hips, testing every sound for pain but her hands clinging to his hair were gentler than her fingertips had felt on his back. There was blood on his sheets afterwards from the bullet wound. Jon wound fresh bandages around her leg and kissed the  place until the pain had died away again and her cigarette was burned through.   
  
It was late when he woke up. The pink light from The Wall was replaced by fresh sunshine after the rain storm the night before.   
  
Alys was gone. So was her dress, her revolver and the gun from the counter.  
  
 _Every Karstark’s a liar,_ he remembered. Robb had tried to tell him.  
  
She’d left a note with a red lipped kiss and blood stains in bathtub.   
  
 _Thanks for the gun, Snow._  
  
Jon’s phone was ringing.   
  
“We’re going to need to you come in straight away,” the Old Bear said. “We’ve found Daryn Hornwood.”


End file.
